The Emporia Gazette

November 23, 2008

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Every summer Fremont Park features an unintentional, unfortunate battle of two conductors: The one directing the traditional music of the Emporia Municipal Band, and the one leading the chugging, choo-chooing, intrusive backbeat of passing trains.

During the band’s concerts on Thursday nights during June and July, it’s not uncommon for train conductors to sound their horns as the trains thunder down the tracks at East 3rd Avenue and Union Street, just south of the park. The noise doesn’t hinder director Gary McCarty from hearing and conducting the band. For the audience, it’s a different matter. McCarty has heard a number of complaints in the 13 years he’s been director.

“The train traffic’s picked up so much in the last couple of years,” he said. “I’ve counted as many as nine trains going through during our one-hour concert, and sometimes two at once.”

If the city of Emporia follows through on talks to pursue a railroad “quiet zone” on the Santa Fe rail line’s Seattle Subdivision Corridor, homeowners and music lovers living and listening along the corridor might eventually find more auditory peace. The state could potentially donate funds to close some railroad crossings, meaning the city could cut the project cost from about $1.5 million to $876,500. Burlington Northern might also eventually agree to donate money to the cause, lowering the city’s price tag even more.

But with the city now trying to figure out how the Tyson plant layoffs will affect city funds, the quiet zone situation is one of a number of issues now considered a lower priority.

“Because I’d be reluctant to have a series of neighborhood meetings only to find out we’re not going to move ahead in the next year or whatever due to financial reasons,” City Manager Matt Zimmerman said. “So it’s been temporarily put on hold till we figure out where we stand financially and what projects we want to move ahead with.”

The potential quiet zone plan, discussed at the city’s Jan. 23 work session, includes the closing of crossings at Peyton, Sylvan, Cottonwood, Union, Market and Constitution streets. Medians would be installed at the crossings at Weaver, East, Exchange, and Commercial streets.

The state often puts up money for closing railroad crossings at a cost of up to $150,000 per crossing. If it supplies that amount for each planned closing, that would slice $900,000 off the city’s cost.

Zimmerman said the city has been working in the Building Futures program to address quality-of-life issues such as noise pollution. Tim Mohn is one resident of the neighborhood near Fremont Park who hates the constant noise provided by the train whistles. He said during the summer, if he has the windows open at his home at 427 Union, it’s difficult to even have a conversation when the train is going by. Some of the conductors, he said, lay on the whistle for an extended period.

“I may be reading too much into it, but there was one just yesterday that came by that did not let off his (whistle) — I should have timed it, but I would guess that it was close to three minutes or so,” he said. “Boy, that whistle just — nonstop — just blew. ... It was ridiculous, to the point where I was getting angry.”

However, Mohn isn’t a fan of the idea of closing crossings or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on implementing a quiet zone. He believes the conductors could make things a lot more quiet by just scaling back the whistle-blowing.

“It seems like we could talk to the railroad and say, ‘Look, they don’t need to be blowing their whistles like this, this is ridiculous,’” he said. “A couple toots right before each intersection would suffice.”

Steve Forsberg, a spokesperson for Burlington Northern, said conductors are required by federal law to blow their horn for 15-20 seconds for each public crossing they’re approaching. He said the problem with that law arises when a train approaches a number of crossings that are a short distance away from each other.

“A train traveling at 45 mph or faster has to begin blowing the horn a quarter-mile in front of the crossing in order to hit that 15-20 second requirement,” he said. “So when you have crossings that are less than a quarter-mile apart, the train sequence will no sooner be completed for one crossing than they have to begin blowing for the next.

“So that often leads to perceptions on the part of the public that the train crew is blowing excessively, when really what they’re doing is complying with the federal regulation.”

Forsberg said there is a consensus between state departments of transportation and the federal government that there are too many crossings in the U.S. He said BNSF often offers communities financial incentive to close crossings, which is usually dependent on how many will be closed.

With the quiet zone on the city’s back burner, there have been no recent discussions between the city and BNSF about additional funding.

“I think we’ve come up with really good plan,” Zimmerman said. “Now, it’s just a matter of finding out what the cost would be (to the city) and finding a way to fund it. Even if Burlington Northern paid half, you’d still be looking at a $450,000 cost to the city. And I’m not sure where we’re to stand, but I’m not sure we’re going to have an extra $450,000 sitting around this year, at least.”

A study last year by Railroad Controls Limited provided the original cost estimate. Representatives from the city, the Kansas Department of Transportation and BNSF later participated in an on-site walk-through of the corridor.

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